Posts Tagged ‘Jon Oliva’

JEFF PLATE

INTERVIEW BY MARKO SYRJALA AND ARTO LEHTINEN

LIVE PHOTOS BY MARKO SYRJALA

New York native Jeff Plate is a professional drummer who’s best known for his drumming for legendary metal band Savatage which went to hiatus in 2002. Plate appeared on four Savatage albums including the classic DEAD WINTER DEAD (1995) and WAKE OF MAGELLAN (1997). Plate’s currently plays with Trans-Siberian Orchestra which was formed in 1993. The band is highly successful and they’re annually playing sold out Xmas tours mainly across the USA. The band mostly consists of current and former members of Savatage including the bands co-founder and main composer Jon Oliva. Plate is also a member classic metal band Metal Church. He first joined that band in 2006 and stayed until they disbanded in 2009. Only three years later the band was back and in 2013 they released GENERATION NOTHING, which was their first studio album in five years. Metal Church made their first ever performance in Finland in June 2014 when they arrived to the Tuska Festival in Helsinki. There we had the chance to sit down with Jeff and discuss Metal Church, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and of course, Savatage.

EDIT: After this interview was arranged, Savatage officially announced that they will do their long-awaited re-union show next year at the Wacken Open Air Festival. See ya there!

More than thirty years after the start of his career with Savatage, and successive projects/bands like Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Jon Oliva’s Pain, now legendary songwriter und performer Jon Oliva releases his first ever solo album, titled „Raise The Curtain”.

On June 21st (USA: July 2nd) the master’s new piece of work will be available as CD Digipak (first edition) and 2-vinyl (gatefold, limited to 800 copies worldwide).

The album will be released simply under the banner „OLIVA“ and you can expect a mixture of Jon Oliva’s early influences and the material he wrote and recorded throughout his whole artistic career.

Legendary singer, keybordist, guitarist, songwriter etc Jon Oliva has made a long and successful career in music world. Although he had already played in several bands in the seventies it wasn’t until the mid eighties that he found real success with Savatage which was originally formed by Jon and his brother Criss Oliva. The band released many highly praised masterpieces like “Gutter Ballet”, “Hall Of The Mountain King” and the rock opera “Streets”. 1993 was a tragic year for Jon and Savatage when Criss Oliva died in a car accident. Despite the huge loss, Savatage decided to continue without Criss. The band released three more high quality studio albums: “Handful of Rain”, “The Wake of Magellan” and “Poets and Madmen” before band slowly went on hiatus in 2004. Although it’s been very quiet in Savatage camp since then there has been a lot of going on in the world of Jon Oliva. He’s been extremely busy with the rock orchestra band TSO (Trans Siberian Orchestra) and his new band Jon Oliva’s Pain. The latter just released their second studio album “Maniacal Renderings”. I had the honor to meet up with the legend while Jon Oliva’s Pain visited in < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Copenhagen last April and here is the latest info concerning Jon’s latest activities and future plans …

Savatage – Tribute To A Fallen Brother

Intervieweded in May 2000 by Keith McDonald

Savatage was formed by Jon and Criss Oliva in 1981. They quickly became one of the premier metal outfits to come from a decade known for creating legendary hard rock and heavy metal bands. They released City Beneath The Surface in 1983 and have continuously released albums that some may call masterpieces. They have sold millions of albums worldwide and gathered a loyal following of fans around the world. But their success did not come without heartache. Lead guitarist Criss Oliva will killed in a car crash leaving the band without a huge piece of the puzzle. Instead of calling it quits they felt the best way to honor Criss would be by continuing the music. They have just released Ghost In The Ruins (A Tribute to Criss Oliva), a collection of live recordings to honor his memory. I had the chance to speak with Jon Oliva who let me in on the new release.